


Capes and Cowls #1

by Vigs



Series: One Multiverse Over [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: F/M, Gen, Original DC reboot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-06-27 20:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15693213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vigs/pseuds/Vigs
Summary: While Batman tracks Ra’s and Talia al Ghul across the globe, Robin is left to protect Gotham on his own. But when a mysterious “Oracle” begins sending him helpful information, he must decide whether he’s being assisted or manipulated.





	1. Robin

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of a frankly absurdly ambitious project: an original version of the DC multiverse. I'm drawing on multiple sources, including comics, the DCAU and other TV shows, and various movies, but this will mostly be an original interpretation of the characters. I would call it a "modern" reboot, but usually when people say that they mean "more violent and edgy and dark," and that's not what this is. An SJW reboot might be more accurate. I hope to keep the essences of the characters intact while exploring new directions their stories can take. I won't expand too much on those changes in the tags or author's notes, because they should come through naturally in the story, but I will promise this: no one gets fridged and there will be major characters who are queer and/or disabled and/or POC without that being their whole identity. Some stories or chapters will have higher ratings, archive warnings, or specific content notes.
> 
> I'll also say that in this universe Richard Grayson goes by "Rick" because, c'mon. I can believe that a man can fly, I can't believe that a 21st century teenager would choose to be called "Dick." Edit: I've been told that reading "Rick Grayson" is extremely unpleasant for some people, so by suggestion, here's [a word-swap app](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/word-replacer-ii/djakfbefalbkkdgnhkkdiihelkjdpbfh/related?hl=en) you can use to change it back to Dick. That one is for Chrome; there are others for other browsers.

“You look exhausted,” Barbara said. “And I know you always zone out in math class, but usually you don’t actually snore. Getting sick?”

“No, just… stayed up too late,” said Rick Grayson. (He’d refused to go by “Dick” since his first day of middle school, which had been memorably awful.)

Bruce had been out of town for three days now, tracking down Ra’s al Ghul, and working alone as Robin every night had left Rick with bone-deep fatigue. Last night there’d been a museum robbery, several assaults, and one poor bastard who decided to try to scare his ex’s new husband by dressing up as the Joker. All of them were in custody now, although Rick would bet that last guy had about a month or two to live, depending on when the Joker heard about it. The cops would try to protect him, but that might not be enough, and if Rick tried to spend the next two months guarding the guy, he'd miss twenty other murders. That kind of math was the worst part of the job.

“Old man’s out of town,” Rick continued with a yawn. “Didn’t have anyone to take away the Playstation controller. You know how it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do in college,” she said, passing him her notes.

“Keep copying off you, of course,” he said with a grin. “Just let me know where you decide to go, and I’ll get Bruce to buy them a library or something to let me in.”

“Oh yeah? And what do I get out of this?”

“The pleasure of my company, obviously.”

“Oh, right,” she teased with an exaggerated grimace. “That.”

The first time Rick sat at Barbara’s table in the school lunchroom (Vreeland Academy—”the Vree” to its students—was too fancy to have a “cafeteria”), she’d eyed him suspiciously until he’d sheepishly asked if he could copy her math notes. Then she’d relaxed, apparently relieved that his ulterior motive was so mundane.

He had also wanted to reach out to an outsider, but obviously he didn’t say anything about that. Fitting in with the blueblood crowd he was suddenly thrust into when B took him in had been tricky, between his upbringing and his race. He was still about the darkest-skinned person at the Vree. But he was naturally personable, and the Wayne name (not that either Rick or Bruce had ever suggested Rick become "Richard Wayne," but everyone knew whose ward he was) sure hadn’t hurt. Barbara didn’t have either of those going for her; she was the scholarship kid  _ and _ the wheelchair kid. So yeah, he’d noticed that she didn’t have any friends at school and thought maybe he’d try and change that, but he was pretty sure she’d bite his head off if he mentioned it.

They’d chatted a bit about class—well, mostly he’d chatted, but she’d contributed a word or two, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have practice talking to a blank wall—and she’d actually laughed at his impression of their teacher.

There’d been a police fundraiser a week or two later, and he was there with Bruce. Barbara was there with her dad (who, as the police commissioner, knew Robin but not Rick, which always made Rick feel weird). Rick had spent most of the evening with her, since they were the only teenagers. She’d seemed fairly relaxed until he offered to get her a glass of punch. Then all the stiff wariness flooded back in.

“It’s a thing you do, at things like these,” he told her. “You offer to get people punch. It’s not a disability thing, just a fancy party thing. Was that too many ‘thing’s?”

“I’m not a prop,” she said. “I’m not here so you can get your picture in the paper for asking the poor girl in the wheelchair to prom.”

“The Vree doesn’t have a prom. And I promise, if I decide I really need to be in the paper, I’ll just take my pants off at one of these fancy-schmancy parties. Way simpler.”

She snorted.

“Anyway, do you want punch or not?”

“I’ll get some for both of us,” she countered, her tone daring him to object.

“Cool, thanks.”

When she rolled back to him with two glasses of punch, and handed him one, he caught more than a few disapproving looks from the people around them—like he’d made her do it, or something.

“Cheers,” he said, clinking his glass against hers and taking a sip.

They sat together at lunch pretty much every day after that, which was great, because they had first period math together. Babs took excellent notes in perfect handwriting, and didn’t mind him copying them.

“You can just keep them, if you want,” she offered. “I’ll probably never look at them again.”

“What? Then why take them?”

“Writing it down helps me remember.”

“Well, I should probably do that too. Besides, you might need them. Stranger things have happened.” Plus, it was totally possible that Bruce looked through his notes every night, and would ask him about it if they weren’t in his handwriting. Some specific things were private, but outside those lines, B snooped _everywhere._

They IMed a lot, the rest of Sophomore year and into Junior. Babs stayed at the top of the class. Rick went through a few girlfriends—not as quickly as Bruce tended to, but still—and rounded the bases to the point where his honest answer to “Are you a virgin?” would have been “Well… define your terms.”

Meanwhile, the door to Arkham continued to revolve, and the Bat-Signal went up at least once a week. B started actually letting him patrol on his own the summer before Junior year, which was a weird feeling. He’d been asking for a chance to prove himself solo for years, but he’d underestimated how much he relied, psychologically if nothing else, on having someone there to catch him if he fell.

But he did what Bruce had taught him—acknowledge the feelings, don’t fight them, just put them aside and move on—and after he actually managed a few major busts on his own, most of the insecurity went away.

And then Talia came to town to offer Bruce “one last chance” to marry her, and refused to explain the “last” part. B thought she was trying to warn him that Ra’s had another plan for large-scale murder in the works and was trying to inform him without actually feeling that she’d betrayed her father, so he left town to track them down… leaving Gotham in Robin’s care.

Hence the lack of sleep that Babs had noticed.

“So what’re you doing this weekend?” she asked, interrupting Rick’s reverie. “Other than catching up on sleep.”

“Uh, well, I’ve got an essay to write,” he invented. “Plus whatever they assign tomorrow. Other than that...video games, I guess.”

“Boring,” she said. “I thought you were supposed to have a wild party when your parents were out of town.”

“What, at the manor?” Rick winced at the thought of a crowd of teenagers tromping around on top of the Batcave. “It’s not really a wild party kind of place. Besides, Alfred’s still going to be there.”

“Really? I thought Bruce Wayne was all about wild parties.”

“Sure, he goes to other peoples’, or rents a hall. But he doesn’t really have people over.”

“Weird,” she said, but didn’t press him for an explanation.

The two sat in silence for a moment, her munching on a sandwich, him copying her notes.

“Anyway, if you have some free time this weekend—” she started to say before a distant scream interrupted her.

Rick was instantly on his feet. The rest of the students were exchanging nervous glances and shaky laughs, trying to convince themselves it had been nothing, but he knew terror when he heard it.

“What do you think—” Babs started.

“I’ve got to, uh, go to the bathroom,” he interrupted.

“Sure,” she said, but he was already rushing towards a classroom he knew would be empty just then. He’d stashed a spare Robin suit and utility belt in the school’s ventilation ducts, just in case something like this ever happened.

By the time he’d changed, a tricky process in the confined space of the air duct, there had been several more screams, although none of them had been cut off too sharply, which he hoped was a good sign.

Then the lights went out and a voice he recognized echoed over the PA system. Robin froze.

“Hello, wealthy little children,” the voice said, menace in every syllable. “Your so-called school has been repurposed to serve a higher cause. All entrances and exits are closed and guarded, and cell phone signals are being blocked. Cooperate, and you may be lucky enough to end up in the control group.”

Shit, shit, shit. Operating on training and instinct, Robin crawled silently through the duct in the direction of the cafeteria, where most of the students should still be. He reached for a particular pocket in the belt and swallowed two of the four pills he found there, hoping hard that the formula hadn’t been changed too much since last time he and Batman had gone up against—

“The Scarecrow is in control now,” the PA system continued, “and today, we’re all going to learn about fear.”


	2. Batman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Talia is largely based on her first appearance in the DCAU; badass, mysterious, and an active participant in everything that happens. One of my primary motivations for writing this story was the way she got in later episodes; as soon as Ra's is on screen, she just sort of stands to the side and says "Beloved" a lot.
> 
> For comics fans, this is not a Talia who would ever do all the extremely terrible stuff that comics Talia did to create and raise Damian Wayne. That's not the direction I'm going here.

“Hello, Talia.” Batman may not have expected the door he had opened within the Society of Shadows’ underground base to reveal the scene before him, but he remained impassive. “Where is your father?”

“Hello, Beloved.” Talia smiled at him across a table laden with delicious-smelling food. Their surroundings were opulently furnished, with carpets and pillows on the floor and draped cloths covering the stone walls, and Talia was wearing a midriff-baring ivory dress that set off her dark complexion and her slender curves to equal advantage. The Batsuit looked out of place in the warm lighting. “Won’t you join me for dinner?”

“No. Where is Ra’s?” He took a step closer, looming over her, but her smile didn’t falter.

“I would be happy to tell you where he is, and what his current plan is, if you will dine with me,” she said, gesturing towards the table. “As you can see, each dish is communal and I have not yet distributed plates or utensils. I hope you trust that I am aware that any drugs or poisons would affect me before you, since my body mass is lower.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“Do you have time to wander around the complex trying to find information that I could give you?”

Batman crossed his arms and stared down at her without answering.

“And please,” Talia continued, “Don’t tell me you have other ways of getting information out of people. Will you dangle me from a high ledge, and hope that I will forget that you would never let me hit the ground? Will you attempt to  _ beat _ the information out of me, when I am both an opponent trained to resist interrogation and a woman who loves you? Or will you sit, and refresh yourself, and receive the information as a gift?”

Without changing his expression, Batman sat across from Talia and pulled off his gauntlets.

“Thank you for indulging me, Beloved. Would you care to choose a plate?”

He selected a plate, and began spooning food onto it, noting that Talia was careful to also select from any dish he had chosen. They were all Egyptian foods; Batman could smell bamia, mahshi, and basbousa, and his mouth watered. He’d been living on protein bars for several days now, and wasn’t immune to the appeal of actual cooking.

“My mother was Egyptian,” Talia told him as they began to eat. “I sometimes regret that I did not have the opportunity to learn to cook from her. But my father saw little use in such domestic skills, and encouraged me down a different path. This food was prepared by servants.”

Batman gave her a long look.

“What are you doing, Talia?” he asked.

“I told my father I was attempting to seduce you. I told you that I am giving you information.”

“Which is true?”

“Beloved, I have come to know you fairly well, despite your distance,” she said with a smile. “What could tempt you more than an offer of information? Both are true.”

“I see,” he said, allowing the corner of his mouth to twitch into the shadow of a smile. “I did only agree to dinner.”

“I am playing the long game,” she said. “Several long games.”

“Care to let me in on the rules?”

“My father’s plans are becoming increasingly grandiose,” Talia said, the playfulness leaving her voice. “When I was a child, he saw his role as that of a guide, giving humanity a nudge here and a tug there, keeping them from a path of destruction. He no longer considers this to be sufficient.”

“I noticed.”

“Father is dying. He must enter a Lazarus pit every few months now, and the interval continues to shrink. I do not know whether his increasing irrationality is a result of age or of the pits themselves, but I fear for him. I fear that the man he was, the man he truly is, would balk at the man he is becoming.” She met Batman’s masked gaze steadily. “And all that I can do is stand beside him, and attempt to ensure that if he does remake the world, I will be there to counsel him.”

“You have my sympathy, Talia. Really,” he said. “But what is it you want me to do?”

“For now? Stop him,” she said firmly. “He has created a plague which forces the cessation of higher brain functions in humans, destroying everything that makes them people. He intends to spread it worldwide, wait a few generations, and cure the descendents of the survivors so that they may form a new society—under his guidance, of course.”

Batman was on his feet by the time she had finished speaking.

“Bruce,” she said, startling him enough with the absence of endearment to make him stop. “Finish your meal. It contains antigens that will protect you from father’s plague.”

Glowering, he sat down and began shoveling food into his mouth.

“He is still in the preliminary stages of testing,” Talia told him while he ate. “I convinced him to make absolutely sure the plague’s effects were reversible before moving to actual deployment. As you can imagine, I find the fact that he needed to be convinced of that troubling, to say the least.”

“Where is he?”

“He is within this complex,” she said. “I am sorry, but if I tell you anything more, he will be sure to discover that I helped you, and then who will intervene next time?”

“I’m going to make sure there won’t  _ be _ a next time,” Batman said grimly.

“Oh, yes?” Talia asked with a bitter laugh. “Have you a prison that will hold Ra’s al Ghul? Or will you kill him, and break your vow? You will stop him, but he will escape. I will come visit you in Gotham when I can, to discuss a more permanent solution. You have eaten enough to keep you safe now.”

He rose, and this time Talia did as well, walking around the table to stand face-to-face with him.

“You don’t think he’ll guess that you helped me if he realizes I’m immune?” he asked, pulling his gauntlets back on.

“He will not be too angry that I tried to keep you safe,” Talia said. “That is womanly weakness, not betrayal.”

Batman snorted.

“He never stops underestimating you,” he said.

“Neither do you, Beloved,” she responded with a pointedly sweet smile. “But for you I still hold out hope.”

“I think I’m learning,” he said, and kissed her hard and fast before turning to walk out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here, I'll be posting a chapter of Capes and Cowls every other week. Next week, I'll post the first two chapters of a Superman story set in the same universe, so keep an eye out for Children of Krypton #1.


	3. Robin

From the air ducts, Robin was able to scout the school. The situation didn’t look good.

There were large, armed men stationed at each exit. The students had been divided into three groups, and were being herded into different classrooms. When he laid eyes on the Scarecrow himself, the masked man was looking contemplatively at Barbara.

“...likely to be too much of an outlier,” the Scarecrow mused. “She’d make an excellent hostage, though, should the need arise. You there, find me a janitor’s closet and bring me a broom or a mop, anything with a long handle.”

When the henchman got back with a mop, the Scarecrow took it from him and stuck it through the spokes of both wheels of Babs’ wheelchair, effectively immobilizing her. She was looking down, not meeting the Scarecrow’s eyes, but Robin could see her hands clench, just slightly.

“I love my chair,” she’d told him once. “People always assume I hate it, like it traps me or something. Having the chair means I can get around. It makes me free.”

He was going to make the Scarecrow _pay._

But he had to be patient, and gather information before he acted. He continued to observe. The guards at the doors had walkie-talkies and were currently alert, but they’d get bored and careless before too long. The teachers were locked in the staff lounge, guarded by three armed men. The kids who had been taken to the science lab were the “control group,” so he probably needed to worry about them the least.

The other two groups, the ones in the math and English rooms, were going to be exposed to two different versions of fear toxin. Intravenously, apparently; the Scarecrow was fiddling with hypodermics, filling the vials with something translucent and yellowish.

Okay. Options.

He could go after the Scarecrow directly, but he’d be heavily outnumbered, and Scarecrow had hostages to spare… including Babs.

He could try to get the civilians out of the school and then worry about taking Scarecrow down, but the guards were checking in via walkie-talkie every few minutes. That would probably stop once Scarecrow started his “experiments,” but waiting for that opportunity would mean letting at least a couple kids get injected with that stuff.

He could...swap out the fear toxin for something harmless, maybe? But he didn’t have anything like that on him.

"ROBIN," said a voice in his ear, and he almost smacked his head against the low ceiling of the air duct. Whatever it was, it was using the communicator that he and Batman used to talk in the field, but it had the artificial, expressionless voice of a bad movie robot.  "MY NAME IS ORACLE. I AM SORRY FOR CONTACTING YOU THIS WAY. I WILL ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS LATER. RIGHT NOW WE NEED TO HELP THE KIDS AT VREELAND ACADEMY. DO YOU HAVE A PLAN?"

“How do I know you’re not working with Scarecrow?” he asked. How the hell had they managed to get on this line? No one had ever managed that before, not even when he and B went up against that supercomputer.

“IF I WAS WITH SCARECROW, YOU WOULD BE DEAD, RICHARD GRAYSON." Oh  _ shit _ , that was not good. Rick pushed it aside to worry about later.  "I KNOW BATMAN IS NOT IN GOTHAM. I KNOW YOU ARE IN THE AIR DUCTS. YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO TRUST ME FOR NOW. DO YOU HAVE A PLAN?"

“I’m exploring some options…”

“SCARECROW IS LYING ABOUT WHICH GROUP IS THE CONTROL GROUP. THE PEOPLE HE TOOK TO THE SCIENCE CLASS ARE GOING TO GET THE TOXIN AS A GAS. THE GROUP IN THE ENGLISH CLASS WILL BE INJECTED WITH A PLACEBO."

“How the heck could you know--”

“I WILL ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS LATER. WE DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME. HE IS GOING TO DO THE PLACEBO FIRST. YOU NEED TO BE READY."

“Fine. Okay. Thanks for the intel, oh mysterious Oracle. I’m not telling you what my plan is, though. Robin out.” He took the communicator out of his ear--he’d just put it on by habit while he was changing, muscle memory overriding the knowledge that B wasn’t around--then realized he had another question, sighed, and put it back in. “Do you know where he's keeping the gas?”

“IT'S IN A GAS TANK, LIKE YOU'D USE FOR BALLOONS. I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS."

“Okay, thanks.” He tried to think what Bruce would say. “Radio silence starting now.”

He hadn't seen a gas tank, but there'd been a lot to see. He still didn't know whether Oracle was lying.

But sometimes...sometimes you just had to guess. If he guessed wrong, at least one classroom full of kids would get exposed to fear toxin, but if he stayed paralyzed in the air ducts, more would suffer.

He crawled through the air ducts as quickly and quietly as he could, scouting out the situation. It had taken him a while to get the hang of getting around in air ducts without any clanging or claustrophobia, but being able to go places B couldn’t was one of the ways he helped out the most, and he had it down to an art. (It was also one of the only facts he could comfort himself with when he started to resent the fact that his mentor’s shoulders were still nearly twice as wide as his. Rick just wasn’t built like Bruce, and no amount of exercise could change his bone structure.)

Robin quickly discovered that while Scarecrow had each of the entrances under guard, there were enough doors that only the main entrance had two guards. Each of the others had a single man with a gun and a walkie-talkie. He didn’t have any trouble picking them off until he got to the fifth.

Unlike the others, this mook had actually been smart enough to get himself into a corner, away from the air duct, where he’d be able to see anyone coming. Rick hit his gun hand with a Batarang from the air duct, but wasn’t able to get the walkie-talkie away as well.

“Batman in the air duct!” the guard yelled while diving for his gun. Most of the time having everything bat-branded scared people into making mistakes, but this guy was on point. Unfortunately for him, by the time he was armed again Robin had jumped onto his back, and shortly thereafter the henchman was out of the fight.

“Hey, don’t feel bad,” Rick said as he tied the man up. “You did everything right. Seriously, you should get a job as a security guard or something. I know it’d pay less, but the benefits are probably better. And way less risk of your boss deciding to test some psychoactive chemicals on you one day. Think about it.” He’d offer to give a reference, but he didn’t exactly have contact information he could give out. Maybe he should get an email address or something.

There were still two more entrances, including the main one, but Rick figured now was a good time to change tactics. He really hoped Oracle hadn’t been lying, because Scarecrow had almost certainly dosed the first batch of kids by now. His concoctions weren’t usually toxic per se, but if those kids had gotten the real stuff and not a placebo, they might be ripping each others’ faces off by now.

Second-guessing now wouldn’t help anyone. He headed towards the hallway with the math and science classrooms.

Rick got to go behind the scenes most places, but walking through the empty hallways of his own school in the Robin suit still felt bizarre, like a weird dream. He half-expected to walk into a classroom and find that the teacher was Alfred wearing the Batsuit, scolding him for being tardy and not bringing enough smokebombs.

He shook the feeling off. There was heroing to do.


	4. Batman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: oblique references to SA.

“Ah, Detective,” Ra’s greeted him without turning around. “I assume you aren't here to ask for my blessing to marry my daughter.”

“No.” Batman scanned the room. Ra’s appeared to be alone, but there was no way he hadn’t known to prepare. Some apparently decorative carvings on the walls almost certainly hid doors; those were the most likely points of ingress, but trapdoors in the floor or ceiling were a definite possibility as well. He kept constantly alert for the slightest noise behind him. Here in the heart of the Society of Shadows compound, danger could come from any direction, and there could be no safe retreat to the rooftops.

“It is too late for this world,” Ra’s said, and turned away from the desk where he was working. His eyes burned fever-bright. “Incremental change cannot mend a fundamentally broken society. We must begin again. In the long run, my way is the kindest.”

“Your way is insane,” Batman said.

“How fortunate, then, that there is a man dressed as a bat here to show me the path of sanity.” He clapped his hands once, sharply. “But perhaps I am unwilling to listen.”

The slight scraping sound behind him indicated that yes, trapdoors were opening in the floor to allow Ra’s men to jump up, but he responded only by shifting slightly into a combat stance, keeping his eyes on Ra’s.

“Don’t you ever get tired of fighting alone, Detective?” Ra’s asked, nodding for his men to begin the attack. “I can understand the appeal in the idea of being one man against the world, but the reality of it, year after year--”

He smoothly stepped aside as Batman sent a black-clad henchman flying past him, then resumed his speech.

“Surely you don’t expect the young man you’re training to ever reach a point where he can take over even the more mundane aspects of your crusade. I have looked into him carefully, but there is nothing remarkable about him beyond your influence.” He snapped his fingers, and reinforcements slid down ropes from the ceiling. “Even if I did not exist, in a few decades you would be dead. How long would it take before no one remembers the Batman? For your beloved city to return to the squalor and vice that are its birthright?”

He walked towards Batman, who was being held immobile by no less than six men. Others lay on the floor, unconscious or clutching at broken limbs, but Ra’s ignored them.

“I will leave an impact on the world that will last beyond even my lifespan. Already, my fingerprints are everywhere, perhaps invisible even to you.” He drew a hypodermic needle from the sleeve of his robe and uncapped it. “I will not insult you by asking whether you have changed your mind now that you are at my mercy. I will promise, however, that although your mind will depart from this Earth, I will ensure that your genes do not. Goodbye, Detective.”

When Bruce woke from chemically-induced sleep, his first thought was that he was in the hospital. He did get knocked unconscious with unhealthy frequency, leading the life he did, but most people weren’t courteous enough to do it with medical-grade anesthesia, and he could feel the difference. He remembered where he actually was and began to check his surroundings before he opened his eyes.

Positives: He was unbound, clothed, lying on a thin but serviceable mattress, and not being obviously affected by any chemicals other than the fading remains of the anesthesia. Negatives: He was not in his suit. There was something covering his face, but it wasn’t his cowl. He could hear footsteps and voices somewhere fairly nearby. The resonance told him that they were in a rather large space, perhaps a cave.

He cracked open his eyes. There was a video camera directly above him. That was good. It made it more likely that no one in the room with him was watching him too closely. A cautious glance around revealed no guards. He was in a small alcove off a large cave, most of which was occupied by a hole in the floor. The wall was dotted with other alcoves, many of which held small groups of other people, all of whom were barefoot and wearing featureless brown clothing--as he himself was, he noticed. He was the only one with a piece of cloth tied around his head to make a Zorro-style mask, though; presumably a final courtesy from Ra’s.

He wondered whether the virus had been in the injection along with the sedative, or if it was in the air in the cave. How long did he have before he would know whether Talia’s gift of antigens actually worked?

“Hey, the new guy’s awake,” a male voice near him said in Arabic.

“Wonder how they got him,” a woman said in the same language. “I mean, nobody’s going to miss  _ us _ , but some white guy? He must be the most careless tourist ever.”

“Don’t be rude, Salma,” the man chided.

“Why? It’s not like he can understand us.”

“I can, actually,” Bruce said, also in Arabic. “Hi.”

“Hi, new guy,” the man said. “I’m Karim. This is Salma. Welcome to Monkeytown.”

“Call me Ajnabi,” Bruce said. It meant “foreigner.” “What’s Monkeytown?”

“It’s a cave where people start acting like monkeys,” Salma said. “Some faster than others. I was one of the first ones here, and I still haven’t lost it. Don’t get too hopeful, though. Most people go ape the first day. How’d you get taken? And like hell your name is Ajnabi.”

“Sorry, I can’t tell you who I am,” Bruce said. “I’m going to get us all out of here, though.”

“Oh boy. Don’t worry, Karim, the white man’s going to save us.”

“Sorry about Salma,” Karim said. “She says she’s only nice when she’s getting paid to be. We didn’t look under your mask or anything.”

“Thank you.” Bruce got to his feet and went to look into the pit in the middle of the room.

“The ones who’ve gone full ape are down there,” Salma said. “That’s where the food comes in, plus plates and cups and things for those of us who still use them, and then you have to answer a math problem to unlock the door that takes you back to the top. So they all end up stuck down there eventually.”

The people below were in various states of undress. Most didn’t have pants on; presumably they’d soiled them at some point, and retained the intelligence to take them off after that. None were speaking, but one woman was rubbing a child’s back and making a sort of crooning noise. Across the cave from them, a couple was having sex in a relatively out-of-the-way, but not at all private, corner.

“He put kids in here?” Bruce asked, appalled. There were a handful of children, some as young as maybe seven. Everything happening here was horrifying, but the kids...

“Yup. Who’s ‘he’?” Salma asked.

“The Demon’s Head.”

“Shit, are you serious? How would you even know that?”

“Who’s the Demon’s Head?” Karim asked.

“Only the biggest crime boss in… I don’t know, probably the world,” Salma said.

“Never heard of him.”

“Yeah, because he’s actually  _ good _ at being a crime boss. The house I worked in had a couple of his assassins working there for a couple months, as training if they had to go undercover.” She looked at Bruce skeptically. “How would you know about him? And how do you know he’s behind this?”

“I’m, uh, friends with his daughter,” Bruce said, looking sheepish to lead them towards useful conclusions.

Salma laughed. “Guess that explains how you ended up in here with us!”

“You did a crime boss’s daughter?” Karim said, looking impressed. “Damn. I mean, bad idea,  obviously, but still.”

“So what’s the first thing to go?” Bruce asked. “How do you know you’re getting to be, you know, one of them?”

“It starts with a fever, we think,” Karim said. “We don’t exactly have a thermometer in here. But you feel bad and don’t want to move for a while, and then you feel better but everything starts slipping away.”

“Huh. Have either of you had the fever?” Bruce shifted casually, making sure the specifics of their conversation were hidden from the cameras he could see.

“I did,” Salma said. “Ages ago. Why?”

“It’s a virus,” Bruce said. “If you had the fever, but didn’t progress, that means your immune system beat it.”

“So I’m safe?” She looked relieved.

“Not only that,” Bruce said. “You’re full of active antibodies. If we can get blood plasma from everyone who’s had the fever but didn’t progress, and get it into everyone else, we might be able to cure everyone.”

“How do you know that?” Karim asked.

Bruce grinned. “Because the Demon’s daughter gave me the same treatment before I got caught.”


	5. Robin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: Scarecrow uses an ableist slur to refer to Barbara.

Scarecrow’s henchmen clustered nervously in the hallway, guns aimed at the ceiling.

“Batman couldn’t fit in the air ducts, could he?” one of them asked. “I mean, he’s a big dude!”

“Man, you can’t go assuming that Batman can’t do things,” another one said. “He’s some kind of wizard or vampire or something. I heard--”

He was interrupted by smoke filling the hallway from who-knew-where. They all started shooting up at the ceiling, but one by one, the guns went silent.

When the smoke cleared, Robin was the only one left standing… until the Scarecrow stuck his masked head out the door of the math classroom.

“You’re ruining my experiment,” he hissed through his mask. “Take one step closer and I’ll inject the cripple with three doses at once. She can help me narrow down the LD50.” He opened the door further, showing Robin that he was holding three hypodermic needles piercing the skin of Barbara’s neck, his thumb on the plungers.

LD50 meant a dose that would be fatal half the time. Rick was sure Babs would know that if he did, even though she looked angry rather than scared. Even if he got the antidote into her right away, and even if the antidote still worked for this new formula, she would be in serious danger. He stared at the needles against her neck, frozen.

“That’s right, little boy,” Scarecrow said. He wedged Barbara and her wheelchair into the doorway between himself and Robin, and began to back into the room towards the window. The rest of the students had their arms and legs tied to their desk chairs and their mouths gagged. “Don’t risk it.”

“He’s trying to distract you!” Babs yelled. “The science--”

“Shut up!” Scarecrow snarled. “You’ll pay for that!” He went to push the plungers on the hypodermics, but Barbara jerked her head away at the last second; apparently he hadn’t realized that she was able to move her upper body. Two of the needles clattered to the floor, but the third emptied into her neck.

When the Scarecrow bent down to pick up the other two vials, Robin vaulted over Babs and kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling. He was about to tie the villain up when he realized that Barbara was saying something.

“Gas in the science room,” she repeated, squeezing her eyes shut against who-knows-what horrors. “Gas in the science room gas in the science room gas in the science room--”

Save the kids, give his friend the antidote, or stop the Scarecrow, who was edging across the floor towards the window? If B had been there they probably could have done all three, but with Robin alone, he had to pick one, and he had to pick the largest number of civilians.

The students in the science room were also tied to chairs, stuck at lab tables. They looked scared, but they gave a ragged cheer when Robin rushed in, so they were in touch with reality and probably hadn’t been exposed yet.

“Shh!” he said, gesturing for silence. There had been a noise before they started cheering… that was it, a hissing sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. There was an odd eggy smell in the room, too. Was that natural gas?

The bunsen burners! Robin dashed to the emergency gas shutoff, jumping two lab tables on the way. Sure enough, the rubber pipes had been rerouted, attached to a gas tank.  He shut off the flow and quickly began cutting the students free, his batarang slicing through the ropes with ease.

“There might still be some in the air,” he told them once he’d freed a few and the rest had calmed down a little. “Untie everyone else, then everyone get out of this room.”

His heart in his throat, Rick ran back to the math room. Sure enough, Scarecrow was gone and Barbara was still chanting, her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach. Robin stopped just long enough to untie the least hysterical-looking student so that she could untie everyone else before he went to Babs.

“Hey,” he said quietly to her. If she recognized his voice, then so be it. “Shh, shh, it’s okay, I got them out. Everybody’s okay.” He pulled the mop out of the spokes of her wheelchair. It’d be pretty inconvenient if she tried to go off somewhere, but he couldn’t just leave her immobilized like that.

“He has to be okay,” she said. She opened her eyes, but didn’t seem to see him. “It wasn’t the right time to tell him everything, but he has to be okay anyway!”

“He’s fine,” Rick said while he pulled the extra antidote pills out of his utility belt. He wondered if she was talking about him. Nah, probably her dad; he was in a dangerous line of work, it would make sense that she’d worry about him a lot. “Everyone’s fine. You need to take these pills.”

He had to sort of shove them in her mouth while she talked, but she swallowed them reflexively. He would have preferred to stay with her, but there were still things to do.

“You and you,” he said, pointing at two kids he knew were at least moderately reliable and had never been dicks to Babs, “Try to keep her calm. I’ve got some cleanup to do.”

He didn’t get a free moment until after he’d secured a full hypodermic of the new toxin in his utility belt for Bruce to analyze later, untied the kids in the English room (who were shaken but unharmed; Oracle’s intel had been good), released the teachers from the teacher’s lounge, found and disabled the cell signal dampener on the roof, and changed back into his civvies. Rick Grayson, normal high schooler, emerged from the men’s room cautiously, looking relieved and embarrassed that he’d managed to hide through everyone else’s ordeal.

By then, most of the other kids had been picked up by parents, nannies, friends, or servants, depending on their situation. Barbara had already left with her father--for home, not for the hospital, as a quick text confirmed, so she must be doing better. The antidote still worked.

“Busy day, Master Rick?” Alfred asked as he drove Rick back to the Manor.

“You can say that again,” he confirmed, leaning back against the leather headrest. It wasn’t one of the flashier cars B owned, but Rick was pretty sure it was still worth more than the whole circus he grew up in. “And I’ve still got patrol to do tonight, a history test Monday, and that research Bruce wanted me to do while he was gone. How does he do it all?”

“With your help, of course,” Alfred said. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon enough. You’ve been handling things admirably in his absence, if I may say so.”

“Thanks, Alfred,” Rick said. “But if he isn’t back by next week, I might have to find my own vengeful orphan to train. Keep the cycle going, you know.”

Alfred declined to dignify that with a response.

Rick slept, wolfed down dinner, went on a (mostly uneventful, thankfully) patrol, caught a few more hours of sleep, woke up in time for school, and discovered that Friday classes were canceled while a hazmat team finished scrubbing the last traces of fear toxin out of the science lab. Relieved and exhausted, he went back to sleep until noon. At that point, he managed to cajole Alfred into letting him have lunch in his room in front of the computer; he hadn’t even had a minute to check Facebook in, like, two whole days.

He also gave his inbox a quick glance. There was a pretty vague message from the Vree saying they’d be beefing up security; that would probably be annoying. He might need to sneak in there over the weekend and take his stuff out of the air ducts, in case they did a sweep for bombs or whatever. A mask and his utility belt hidden at the bottom of his backpack would hopefully be enough until they relaxed again.

Everything else was college recruiting, game updates, more college recruiting… and something from Oracle. When he moused over the name, it showed an email address that was “o@” and then some IP address. Rick blinked at it. He’d never seen that before.

> R,
> 
> Sorry you had such a rough day on Thursday. Let me know if you’d like to talk.
> 
> O

The signature “O” was a link… again to some IP address. Well, that was sketchy as hell. Sure, “Oracle” had done him a favor, but that didn’t mean he was just going to hand them his computer. It would have to wait until Bruce got home from whatever he was doing.

“You’d better not be out there spending quality time with Talia, B,” he murmured to himself. “Things are getting weird back here.”


	6. Batman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: References to sex work, reclamation of a slur against sex workers

Making the immunization serum would have been easy if they’d had medical equipment. Syringes, a centrifuge, and some way to test the blood to make sure they weren’t spreading other diseases around with the antigens would have been ideal. As it was, they had to make do with whatever sharp object Batman could find, a cup put in the bottom of a tied-shut pant leg and spun around fast enough to make the blood cells settle out of the plasma, and crossed fingers.

He was as certain as it was possible to be that his own blood wasn’t carrying anything; between Bruce’s sex life and the frequency with which Batman was injured or exposed to unidentified chemicals, he tested himself on a monthly basis for just about every disease he could think of. So far, he’d been lucky enough to avoid anything incurable.

Unfortunately, he knew that he’d be in no shape to spearhead the escape if he lost more than a third of his blood—about two liters, he estimated. With the inefficiency of their collection, purification, and delivery options, that would only be enough for about half of the people who needed to be inoculated.

Since he wasn’t about to ask anyone else to contribute as much blood—none of them had his physical conditioning, or even his body mass, and there’d be no way to get them a transfusion if they lost too much—he’d need three or four volunteers out of the six people who’d recovered from the fever and hadn’t deteriorated.

“I’ve been tested for HIV and hepatitis,” Salma said when he’d explained the situation. “I’m negative. Most people don’t get tested, though.”

“I know,” Bruce said. “I don’t think we have much choice, though. Worst-case scenario, even HIV is better than being reduced to an animal.”

“Maybe if you can afford treatment,” Salma said. “You do realize that the rest of us are here because they didn’t think anyone would miss us, right? I talked to most of the people who are down there, while they could still talk. Homeless people, pickpockets, and whores, all of us.”

“Yeah. I was sleeping rough when they picked me up,” Karim said. “I’ve never been tested for anything.”

“I was doing street work, but only because business was slow at the brothel,” Salma said, her eyes daring Bruce to comment. “Street girls usually can’t afford to get tested.”

“Well, we’ll get as much as we can from you and me,” Bruce told Salma. If he didn’t mind compromising his combat ability a bit, he could probably lose up to 40% without going into shock. Another liter or so from Salma might be enough...if they were able to collect every drop. “If that’s not enough, we’ll just have to hope.”

Salma snorted, but held out her arm. “I’ll do you if you do me,” she said.

“First we need to find the cleanest, sharpest object we can, and the best place to hide from the cameras.”

They weren’t lucky enough to find a knife, let alone a needle, but Karim found a piece of metal that had come partly loose from the gate that kept the people who could no longer solve the lock puzzle off the second floor, and Bruce tore it the rest of the way off. It would hurt, but it would do the job.

Sterilizing it was harder. There wasn’t even wood to start a fire. The best they could do was wash it, and their hands, with a bar of soap that had been left out for the comfort of the top-floor people (and presumably to monitor when they stopped caring about hygiene.)

Finding a camera blind spot was comparatively easy...if there weren’t additional hidden cameras, which Batman wasn’t willing to bet on. They found the most secure-seeming spot, then stood shoulder to shoulder, making a circle that would hopefully hide their activities.

“Well,” Salma said, “Guess it’s time. Who first, me or you?”

“I’ve got it,” Bruce said, and cut a precise slash across his inner arm before she could protest.

They filled most of the cups they’d taken from the food area before the bleeding slowed. Bruce quickly wrapped the rough canvas shirt he’d been given around the wound. He was a bit light-headed, which was about what he’d been aiming for.

“Don’t trust me to cut you?” Salma asked when he’d finished.

“Don’t take it personally,” Bruce said. “I’m paranoid.”

Purifying the blood plasma was tedious, but needed to be done. Bruce wasn’t a universal donor, so getting any of his blood cells into the patients could cause serious harm.

“Go eat and drink,” Karim insisted. “You lost too much blood. I can swing a pant leg around as easily as you can.”

“Just don’t lose any of it,” Bruce said. “There’s not a lot more where that came from.”

He ate and drank quickly, feeling some of the numbness leaving his extremities as he did. The impromptu bandage seemed to be holding sufficiently.

Things moved quickly after that. Karim and a few of the others continued to work as makeshift centrifuges while Bruce took blood from Salma and an old man who insisted that if he’d been carrying any diseases, he’d be dead by now. That was the best they could do in terms of screening.

Bruce had expected getting the plasma into the diminished humans to be the hard part. Talia had seemed certain that it would work if taken orally, and his own continued lucidity would appear to confirm that, but they just didn’t have enough blood to do it that way; they had to get it into the bloodstream somehow. Making a long, shallow scratch and then rubbing the serum in was the best he could come up with. Needless to say, the patients did not enjoy this process.

“I don’t know whether to hope they will or won’t remember this,” he commented to Salma while he held a man down so that she could apply the serum.

“They’d better remember,” she said. “Some of them have been having sex, and I haven’t exactly been tracking who. Better to remember than to not realize anything happened until you notice you’re pregnant.”

“Good point,” Bruce said, mentally adding another sum of money to the anonymous gifts he’d be giving to everyone who got through this ordeal.

They exposed everyone to the serum as quickly as they could.

“Now what?” Karim asked. “Someone must have noticed something strange going on. Do we wait to see which comes first, men coming to kill us or intelligence returning to the infected?”

“Not just wait,” Bruce said. “Now we escape.”  


Humans—even humans infected by Ra’s’ virus—were social animals. Getting the infected to follow the uninfected was surprisingly easy, likely because they were understimulated in their captivity. It was jarring how normal (albeit nude) most of them looked, even though they stared at him with blank, uncomprehending eyes if he tried to speak to them.

Batman had spotted the hidden door within his first hour in the cave. The locking mechanism was on the other side, but with the leverage of another broken-off piece of metal, it opened readily enough. Not the way he normally preferred to do things, but stealth wasn’t exactly an option when you were heading up what was essentially a troop of chimpanzees.

Plan C was to announce his intention to challenge Ra’s to single combat and hope that would keep the guards from bothering them while he decided what to do next. Plan B was for Ra’s to be so shocked by Batman’s miraculous immunity that he would make a mistake.

He almost smiled when the first group of Society of Shadows members to spot them immediately turned tail and ran. Plan A was for the virus to be airborne. Ra’s wouldn’t have bothered to inoculate anyone but himself and Talia.

“What the hell?” Salma exclaimed.

“Some of us are still contagious,” Bruce told her. “Apparently the virus can be transmitted by air.”

“We need to stay down here until it’s out of all of our systems, then,” she said.

“Ra’s likes to build his bases in isolated areas. There will be plenty of time for it to run its course by the time you get back to civilization,” he assured her.

“Us? What about you?”

“I need to find the Demon’s Head.”

“Last time you found him, didn’t he infect you with a disease and lock you up?” she asked skeptically.

“His guards weren’t afraid of me last time.” He almost smiled, but it would have been Batman’s smile. No reason to scare Salma.

It was almost anticlimactically easy to find a passage to the surface and a handy supply of travel-worthy clothes, food, and water, presumably kept by the exit in case of emergency evacuation. Dressing the infected and getting them to carry packs of supplies was a bit of a chore, but some of them already seemed to be starting to regain their senses, although none had yet managed to speak.

“Aswan is due west of here,” Bruce told those who could understand him. “Follow the sunset and you can’t miss it.”

Salma nodded, and Karim clapped Bruce’s shoulder. Then the group turned and left. Bruce watched them until they slipped behind a sand dune in the distance. Then Batman went to find the Demon.

“Ra’s!” he called, striding through the hallways. His head was still swimming slightly from blood loss, but it felt good to have members of the Society of Shadows flee from him whenever they saw him. Ra’s’ warrior-disciples might think they were above the law, but under the right circumstances they acted just like two-bit crooks back in Gotham. “We have a conversation to finish!” He was almost to the center of the complex, he could practically _smell_ it, and this time Ra’s wouldn’t evade him—

“I am sorry, Beloved,” Talia said. Batman had reached the room in which he’d been injected, but Ra’s wasn’t there, only his daughter. “He has already left.”

“Because you told him I would be coming.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Your armor, belt, cape, and cowl are here,” she said, indicating a black pile near her feet. “I trust you recall the way back to your plane from this room?”

“How many times will you betray each of us before this is over?” Batman asked. “It can’t continue forever.”

“This is the last time I will betray you, Beloved,” she said. She sounded as though she believed it. “I told you, I will visit you in Gotham when I can, and I will come as a friend. After that, either we will find a path forward together or we will part as enemies.”

“I shouldn’t let you go.”

“You need me to keep an eye on Ra’s.”

“If I took you, he would come for you,” he said, sounding more certain than he was.

“Perhaps. But you don’t want that,” she said. “You don’t want him in Gotham.”

Batman ground his teeth. Everything she said was true—well, probably everything other than the part about this being the last time she betrayed him—but just letting her go felt far too much like cutting a deal. The first small step towards corruption.

“Here,” Talia said, and removed the necklace from around her neck. It held a smooth blue gem as long as her thumb. She stepped forward to give it to him. “Consider this my surety. It was a gift from my mother. I will want it back.”

“Keep it and go,” Batman said, pushing her hand away. Even if she was telling the truth, it would have felt too much like taking a bribe.

“I will see you in Gotham, Beloved,” Talia said. She put the necklace back on and kissed his cheek before turning to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My buffer has gotten kind of ridiculously huge, so I'll be posting both Wednesdays and Saturdays until further notice.


	7. Oracle

“You’re sure you’re alright?” Barbara’s father asked her over dinner. It felt like the thousandth time he’d asked since he’d picked her up from the school.

“I’m fine, dad,” she said, stabbing a forkful of chicken breast with perhaps slightly more force than was necessary. He was being patronizing, and he _knew_ how she felt about that. “I told you, Robin gave me the antidote.”

“Honey, a gang of criminals invaded your school,” he said. “You’re allowed to be not-fine even without any toxins being involved.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not.” She paused to sort out her words. “Not not-fine, I mean. Just another day in Gotham, right?”

“Being face to face with the Scarecrow wouldn’t even be ‘just another day’ for _me_ , and I signed up for that sort of thing,” he pointed out. “You don’t have to be strong all the time, Barb.”

“I know I don’t _have_ to be, but I really am okay, dad.” She took a deep breath. How much could she say without just scaring him more, or letting him know she had information she wasn’t going to share with him? “I’m actually sort of proud of myself. I overheard the Scarecrow telling his henchmen to hook up the gas in the science room, and even after I got dosed I managed to get that information to Robin. A whole roomful of kids might have gotten a dose of fear gas if I hadn’t done that, and I bet Robin wouldn’t have had enough antidote on hand for all of them.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” her dad said, and walked around the table to hug her.

Barbara wasn’t a big hugger--the way people leaned over her to do it made her uncomfortable--but she hugged him back for a few seconds before patting him on the back twice. Two taps had been her “let go of me now” signal since she was little, and as always, he backed off immediately.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said, going back to his seat. “Prouder than I can say. And I promise I’ll leave you alone about it after this if that’s what you want, but you’re allowed to be proud of yourself and also scared or tired or angry or anything else.”

“I mean, tired, yeah,” Barbara admitted. “From the adrenaline or whatever.”

“Of course. Hey, I’ll dry the dishes tonight, okay?” He smiled at her. “You go ahead and get some rest once you’re done eating.”

“Thanks, dad,” she said. Being excused from her usual chore would be good; she really was tired, and she needed time to send an email to Rick before she went to sleep. She wanted to double-check the code that would make his browser recognize the .oracle top-level pseudo-domain if he clicked the link she’d embedded, so that he could access the information on Gotham criminals that she’d pieced together and wanted to share with him. Well, him and Batman, in theory, but she trusted Rick way more than she trusted Bruce Wayne.

“I wonder why it was just Robin,” her dad mused. “He was the only one anyone saw at that museum robbery the other day, too. Hope Batman’s okay.”

“Maybe he’s actually using his vacation time, unlike some people,” Barbara said pointedly. Her dad wouldn’t take paid time off unless he was in the hospital or she was on a college tour.

“I doubt it,” her dad said with a chuckle. “I’m pretty sure he’s even more of a workaholic than I am, Barb.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Barbara said. “Speaking of which, you sure you don’t want me to dry?”

“I can wash and dry dishes from a meal for two,” her dad said fondly. “Just this once.”

“I’m going to go get some screen time in, then,” she said. “And then sleep.”

“Just remember, it would be perfectly natural to have nightmares after a day like today, and if you need to wake me up--”

“I’ll remember that if you’ll remember I’m not six, dad. Jeez.” Barbara cleared her place at the table, then rolled over to her bedroom. It was good to have control over her own movement again. She’d taken the handles off her chair ages ago, to keep people from trying to move her around like furniture. The wheels were pretty much the only part of the original chair left; the rest of it was basically an elaborately modified PC, with some padding. Maybe there was something she could do with the wheels to keep from being rendered immobile by something as simple as a mop through the spokes. Hubcaps, or something.

Or maybe she’d start smuggling a hacksaw to school with the rest of her contraband. Nobody ever searched the wheelchair, not even the Scarecrow’s goons, or they might have noticed the hidden split keyboard on the insides of the armrests or the speakers right by her ears, carefully set to be audible only to the person sitting in the chair.

She’d only finished the program to hack into Batman and Robin’s communications a few weeks ago, and it had been tricky to start it up without being able to use her monitor, but once she had, everything had worked perfectly. So yeah, like she’d told her dad: mostly she felt proud.

She sent the email to Rick and sighed to herself. She’d intended to let him know who she was once she’d established herself as useful, and she definitely felt like she’d done that today, but now that the moment had arrived she just didn’t feel secure enough to do that. Who knew how Batman would react to the idea of accepting help from a disabled teenage girl. Maybe she’d wait until she’d saved _his_ ass to let them know who she was.

With that out of the way, she did bit of maintenance on her various sockpuppets. She had a presence in every community of hackers that was worth joining, but none of them knew she was a teenage girl.

She’d actually had some fun coming up with personalities and backstories for all of them. One occasionally mentioned a wife or the weather in California, one didn’t have a girlfriend and was bitter about it, one didn’t share personal details but occasionally used idioms wrong and said “good night” or “good morning” at times that would have made sense in Japan. She’d almost come up with a backstory and mannerisms for Oracle when she came up with the name, but no; Oracle was going to be _her_ , really her, even more real than Barbara Gordon the clever but easily-overlooked high school student.

Before she made friends with Rick, most of her socializing had been in the form of hiding behind facsimiles of the kind of hacker other hackers would accept: an adult male, casually prejudiced, more certain of his own brilliance than he ought to be but brilliant nonetheless.

It may have rubbed off on her more than she’d thought. She still remembered the look Rick had given her when she told him she was a libertarian. Now she wasn’t sure what she was, politically speaking.

Overall, she knew exactly what she was. She was Oracle, she was the best goddamn hacker on the planet, and as of today, she was officially a superhero.

That thought, warming though it was, didn’t keep away the nightmares.


	8. Batman

As soon as Bruce was on the Batplane, he set the autopilot for Gotham and called Alfred. They could talk while he treated the cut in his arm.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred said by way of greeting. “I trust your trip was successful?”

“Half and half,” Bruce said. “I stopped Ra’s’ latest plan to save humanity by killing most of it, but I didn’t manage to actually capture him. What have I missed in Gotham?”

“I’m afraid there was a bit more excitement here than you would have hoped for, although Master Rick is uninjured and acquitted himself admirably,” Alfred said, predicting and heading off Bruce’s questions. “The Scarecrow made a surprise visit to Vreeland Academy.”

“Scarecrow was at Rick’s  _ school _ ?” Bruce asked, horrified.

“He has been keeping a spare suit and belt there in case of just such an emergency,” Alfred reminded him. “There were no serious injuries, and only one student was exposed to Scarecrow’s concoction. Master Rick was able to administer the antidote to her within five minutes. Unfortunately, as with Mr. al Ghul, the Scarecrow was able to escape.”

“He can be slippery,” Bruce said. “Where is Rick now?”

“Patrolling, at the moment,” Alfred said. “He should be back soon.”

Bruce felt a swell of pride for Rick. After what must have been a difficult experience, he was back on the streets of Gotham by himself without a pause. Batman had left the city in good hands.

“Please have him call me when he gets home,” Bruce said.

“Of course. Ah… I don’t suppose you apprehended  _ Miss _ al Ghul either?”

“Not this time,” Bruce said shortly.

“Very good, sir. I believe I hear Master Rick returning now.”

After a moment, Bruce could hear the faint sound of Robin’s motorcycle as well.

“Quiet night, Master Rick?” Alfred asked, his voice muffled by distance from the phone.

“As quiet as Gotham ever is. Did I hear you talking to B? Is he finally coming home?”

“I’m en route as we speak,” Bruce said. He finished bandaging his arm and turned the video on, just to confirm to himself that Rick was, in fact, in one piece. “I hear you had a run-in with Professor Crane.”

“Yeah, it was weird. He kept talking about ‘experimenting,’ but I got a sample of the stuff he was using, and the test you have set up says it’s the same toxin he’s been using for awhile now, so I don’t know what he thought he was going to learn.” Rick was talking too much--hiding something. “He also just happened to grab my best friend as a hostage, so that was fun. She’s the only person who got dosed, but I got her the antidote and I think she’s fine. Babs is tough, she was giving me intel while he had a syringe to her neck.”

“What aren’t you telling me.” The flat affect and interrogatory manner of Batman was easier than actually emoting while he was still absorbing the information that his boy had faced the  _ Scarecrow _ by  _ himself _ .

Rick sighed. “Someone calling themself Oracle hacked our comms.”

“What?” Batman sat up straight. “You should have told me sooner, or better yet disabled them on your end--”

“Not  _ these _ comms,” Rick said. “Not that I know of, anyway. I mean the earpieces. I put mine in when I suited up, just out of habit, and someone started talking to me through it.”

“Oh.” Bruce relaxed slightly. The short-range transmitters they used in the field would be easier to hack than the system they were making this call over, if someone spent enough time around them. “What did they say? Threats?”

“Uh, actually, they gave me good intel and helped me beat Scarecrow.” Rick sighed. “There was kind of an implied threat, though. They, uh. Called me Richard Grayson. Someone ID’d us, B.”

Bruce’s blood ran cold.

“Did you say anything that would have confirmed it, if it was just a guess?” he asked.

“I didn’t confirm or deny.”

“Good. That’s good.” Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Did they give you a way to contact them?”

“Yeah, but it’s sketchy as hell--an email with a very suspect-looking link. I was thinking we’d get a clean box and set up a separate network before we tried clicking it.”

“Good thought,” Bruce approved. “Do it.”

“What, like, now? What if it sucks me into the internet or something?”

“You’ve been watching too much TV.”

“One of us needs to be able to pick up pop culture references.” It was a familiar pretend-argument, and Bruce used the comfort of it to make himself relax. This wasn’t the end of the world. People had found out their identities before. Hell, Ra’s and Talia knew their identities.

“Make a burner email address and forward the email to it,” he instructed. “Then get it on a brand new computer on a completely separate network, and then click the link.”

“I’ve already got like half of that done. But if I get sucked into the internet, you’ve got to come rescue me.”

“I’ll try, but I’ll probably end up being defeated by an unfamiliar meme,” Bruce bantered. “Or--wait, it’s the middle of the night there. You should go to bed.”

“It’s the weekend. I can stay up a little later to get sucked into the internet. The idea’s kind of growing on me, really.”

“Go to bed,” Bruce ordered. “You know how important it is to maintain a set sleep schedule. You can get sucked into the internet in the morning. I’ll be home by then.”

“Fiiiiiiiine.” Rick’s faux-whine softened into something more genuine. “It’ll be good to have you home, B.”

“I’ll expect a full report on Scarecrow, and anything else you ran into while I was gone.” Bruce cleared his throat. “Thanks for watching the city for me, R. You did well.”

Rick’s proud grin was the whole world for a moment.  
  


Bruce was tempted to sleep on the way home, but the autopilot wasn’t good enough that he was comfortable leaving it completely unsupervised, particularly when there was a hacker poking into his systems. He started working on the anonymous gifts he’d be sending to the people Ra’s had been experimenting on. Obviously he hadn’t been able to figure out who most of them were, but he tracked down Salma and Karim’s identities without too much trouble, and he was fairly confident that he could trust the two of them to distribute money to the rest, especially if he earmarked enough for the two of them that survival wouldn’t be a concern. He’d check in on them periodically, make sure everyone was getting fairly compensated and that the people who’d regressed were recovering.

They would definitely need a lot of therapy. Bruce was a big believer in therapy for other people.

Stepping off the jet was like stepping into a freezer. Bruce grimaced; he’d barely been in Egypt for a week, but it had been long enough that he’d gotten used to the heat. Gotham in January was a shock to the system. At least it woke him the rest of the way up.

It was mid-afternoon when he got back to the Manor. Rick had set up a separate network and a clean box to use to contact the hacker, and was practically vibrating with the need to check it out.

“They had a robot voice, but I don’t think they were actually a robot,” he said. “It took them some time to respond to things that I said, like they had to type it out, and… I dunno, they just didn’t seem like an AI. The diction seemed human, you know?”

“It could be a very good AI,” Bruce said. “But a human, or a group of humans, is at least as likely. Show me this mysterious email.”

The email address and the URL for the link were definitely both strange. Deep web, obviously; whatever was at that address wouldn’t be indexable by search engines.

“Moment of truth,” Rick said. “See you in the internet.” He clicked the link.

Once the page was loaded, its url was displayed as “robin.oracle,” so there had definitely been some sort of Trojan embedded in the email. Browsers wouldn’t normally recognize “.oracle” as a valid top-level domain.

The page itself was just text.

“Hi, Robin. Thanks for trusting me at least a little. I want to help you and Batman. I can improve your net sec, find information for you, coordinate your comms, and make tools for you. The security on your main network is impressive, but the only reason I haven’t breached it is out of politeness. If you’d like to test my claims by beefing it up a bit and seeing if I can still access it, just let me know. You can reach me from this computer at o@oracle.oracle; I’ve modified your browser to give you access to my intranet. I haven’t done anything else to your computer, although I don’t expect you to believe me or to have used your main computer.

I know this is all pretty sketchy, but I really do want to help you and Gotham. As proof of my intentions, here’s some intel I’ve gathered on various criminal organizations. Ignore it, use it, or try to verify it, your choice.

Oracle”

Below there was a list of links, all the names of leaders of criminal organizations: Two-Face, Maroni, Penguin, Falcone, Scarecrow, and Joker.

“Well that’s weird,” Rick said. “What do you think, B?”

“I think I need to sleep before I can help figure this out,” Bruce admitted. Being knocked unconscious by Ra’s was the closest thing to sleep he’d gotten in over 60 hours, and he’d drained a dangerous amount of his blood on top of that. “Check the files and cross-reference them with our own database. Look for any overlap, any inconsistencies, anything that looks important.”

“Homework, great,” Rick complained theatrically, but he was already starting to look through the data. “Oh man, if this stuff is legit, it’s going to be really useful.”

“That’s a big if,” Bruce said. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

He went to his room and barely managed to undress before falling into blissful unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final update comes on Saturday! Then I'll be going straight into Capes and Cowls #2 on Wednesday.


	9. Robin

The data from Oracle was honestly mind-boggling. It contradicted their own database in a few places, but each time, it seemed likely that their own data was out of date. Oracle had tracked down communications between Gotham criminals and out-of-towners, Joker and Scarecrow’s orders from chemical companies, and the locations and credentials for a number of offshore bank accounts.

According to this, Scarecrow had been buying the chemical precursors to his fear gas in bulk lately. That was worrying.

They’d also identified a few cops as probably corrupt. Rick knew that Batman and Gordon hadn’t finished ferreting out every trace of corruption in the GCPD, but the ones who were still on the take were the ones who were careful about hiding it. Oracle had found them out anyway.

Assuming any of this was real data.

Over dinner (which was grilled salmon with a maple-soy glaze served with rice and green beans, because Alfred was the real hero), Rick summarized his findings to Bruce.

“I know the risks of following this information if it’s false are huge,” he concluded. “But I’m not sure we can afford to just ignore it when there’s a chance it is real. What do you think?”

“This would be a very roundabout way to go after us, particularly if they know who we are,” Bruce said. “But they may be hoping that we’ll take Scarecrow down, and planning to come after us after that.”

“They do seem to be anti-Scarecrow, at least,” Rick agreed. “Speaking of which, we should probably check out the Vree before the students go back on Monday, in case he left behind anything nasty.”

“Good thought,” Bruce agreed. “Let’s do that when we’re over that way during patrol tonight.”

It almost felt weird to have B back. Suiting up together, heading out on patrol together, it was all so much easier with someone to watch his back. They broke up a gang fight and stopped a mugging before they got to the Vree.

“The air ducts should be clear,” Rick told Bruce. “I was all over them while Scarecrow was here and I didn’t see anything.”

“Mm. You look around up here, I’ll go check the boiler room and the water supply,” Batman said tersely. “Stay off the comms unless it’s a life-or-death emergency. Meet back here when you’ve finished.”

“You got it,” Rick said, and started methodically checking the rooms. It would be more Joker than Scarecrow to leave a syringe taped under a desk or something, but you could never be too careful.

The most interesting thing he found was a stack of graded papers. He’d gotten a B+ on an essay he’d written while most of his attention was on the police scanner, so that was cool.

“All clear up here, B,” he said as he went back to the entrance where they’d split up. “Anything downstairs?”

“He’d hooked it up to the water supply, and booby-trapped it,” Bruce said. Rick noticed that his face—well, his jaw, anyway—was paler than usual. “I got an extra-strength dose. The antidote’s working, but I can still feel it.”

“Ah, jeez,” Rick said. “You want to head back to the cave and I’ll finish patrol?”

“No. Let’s go.”

Rick knew not to argue with B when he used that tone of voice. The rest of the patrol was uneventful, if a bit more thorough than usual. B seemed determined to check absolutely every dark corner in Gotham. He was looking better by the time they finished, though.

“So what do you think about Oracle?” Rick said when they were back at the cave.

“Too risky,” B said. “We’re not acting on the intel, and I’m going to rework our ear comms. Keep talking to them, though. See if you can get a hint of who they are. Watch out for mind games. They may have contacted you first because they think you’ll be easier to manipulate. We might be able to use that against them.”

“Yeah, okay,” Rick said. “I’ll send them an email tonight.”

> Oracle,
> 
> Thanks for the intel, but it’s hard to trust someone when you have no idea who they are. A bit rich coming from a guy who wears a mask, I know, but right now I don’t even know if you’re a person or a computer. Is there anything you’re comfortable telling me about yourself?
> 
> Robin

 

> Robin,
> 
> I’m a person. I’ll tell you who I am once you’ve seen how useful I can be.
> 
> Give me any challenge, any test, and I’ll beat it. As long as it’s computer-based, anyway. I’m comfortable telling you that I’m not as good at jumping around on rooftops as you are.
> 
> Oracle

School on Monday was weird. A bunch of students were staying home, just in case the Scarecrow came back. The people who were there were jumpy, except for Babs. She mostly seemed to be angry.

“Are you trying to burn a hole in Allison’s jacket?” Rick asked her at lunch. She was half-turned in her chair, glaring at the girls at a nearby table.

“They’re laughing at me,” Babs said, tearing her eyes away with visible effort. “I hate that.”

“I don’t think they are,” Rick said, frowning. “Allison’s actually pretty nice. There are plenty of things they could be laughing about.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Babs said. She didn’t sound at all convinced. Someone at another table laughed, and she flinched.

“You sure you’re okay?” Rick asked. He knew Babs was touchy, but she wasn’t usually this paranoid.

“I’d be better if people would stop asking me that,” she snapped. “I swear, since Thursday everybody’s been twice as patronizing as they used to be.”

“It makes sense for you to be a little on edge—”

“Just quit it!” Babs said, loudly enough that a few nearby students actually did turn to look at her.

“Okay, okay,” Rick said.

The detective skills Bruce had drilled into him were itching. Babs was being paranoid. B was being even more paranoid than usual. Both of them had been exposed to fear toxin. But B had run tests—several times, because of how paranoid he was being—and the stuff they’d been exposed to was chemically identical to Scarecrow’s old fear toxin. It should have been completely cured by the antidote.

Well, Rick didn’t know what had happened to B while he was in Egypt. Maybe Ra’s made a bunch of threats while he made his escape, and that had B on edge. And Babs had just been through a traumatic experience; it made sense for her to be twitchy.

There probably wasn’t anything more sinister going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are always welcome. Capes and Cowls #2 will start on Wednesday.


End file.
